What faction has the best strategic position in your eyes? If you look at the map (for those who have not seen it here it is: http://www.totalwarcenter.com/forums...showtopic=6051 Scroll down to eldaran's post)
Anyway, IMO I think the Brutti have the best position of everyone: At the start they border with no enemies (Only Romans) and can thus choose which way they will go. The Aegaen is full with conflict and the Brutti can make very good use of that. All they need to do is side with one or two factions and gang up on the third. Once you get done with that faction you move on to next with other allies and so on and so on, until you have created the eastern empire.
If anything goes wrong you'll only need to have a big fleet to protect your Italian holdings and all is well.
So what really saying is that the Brutti can easily take advantage of foreign quarrals without getting hurt in return. This is a very strong position in which most powers in history managed to become great or even super powers (Great Britain, USA).
All the other factions have some other faction in front of them which they most overcome. The Brutti don't have that and can thus choose their fights. A word of caution though. Should any of the other Roman families fail against their immidiate enemies (Scipii: Carthage, Julli: Gaul) the Brutii should not hesitate to help them.
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